Octopus Group has acquired Hatch Financial Coaching in a bid to bring financial coaching to the mass market.
Founded in 2017, Hatch Financial Coaching will be rebranded Octopus Moneycoach and will seek to fill the gap between advice and robo-advice through a combination of smart financial planning software and financial coaches.
The service, typically aimed at individuals in early-career to mid-life, is designed to help those who would benefit from a human relationship to make financial decisions but do not yet have sufficient assets or complex needs to warrant traditional advice with around £10,000 to invest a year.
Octopus Moneycoach currently has 30 financial coaches but plans to increase this to 200 over the next two years. Octopus said it will invest £10 million into the venture to help scale the business.
The acquisition follows research from the FCA which suggests that more than 18 million people in the UK could benefit from more affordable advice.
Simon Rogerson, co-founder and CEO, Octopus Group (pictured), said: “While the advice industry serves many people extremely well, there are still vast swathes of the UK population who don’t get any form of financial advice. This has huge implications for people’s finances but also for their mental health, as money worries are one of the biggest causes of stress.
“Octopus Moneycoach offers a solution to this by providing easy to understand financial coaching at a much lower cost for those people who would otherwise struggle to get help. It’s hard to overestimate the positive impact this can have, as for many it feels like a large weight has been lifted off their shoulders. For forward thinking businesses keen to support the mental and financial wellbeing of their staff, it should be a no brainer.”
Octopus Moneycoach works primarily with employers, who offer its services as part of their workplace benefits, citing MoneySuperMarket, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Epson and Experian as existing clients.
Data showed that within their first year, over half (55%) of Hatch clients were able to increase their monthly savings, while a quarter increased their pension contributions and just over half (51%) reduced their debt.
Adam Price, CEO and founder, Hatch, commented: “For lots of people, any proper advice they get tends to be siloed and focused on specific products, such as pensions or mortgages. Our mission with Hatch is to make holistic financial planning affordable for everybody, helping people to make their life goals financially achievable, whatever they may be. Octopus has been a vocal champion of financial advice and the need to close the advice gap for many years now, making it a natural partner for us in this next stage of growth. We know there’s a huge need for this kind of service, maybe more so now than ever before, and I’m incredibly excited about what we can achieve as part of Octopus.”
